@ephemer

When it comes to Ubuntu, I normally recommend the latest LTS (long-term support) release. That’d be 16.04 as of right now :-).

To get you started, I’d recommend the following guide which covers NodeJS installation on 16.04:

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-node-js-on-ubuntu-16-04

…

In terms of connecting to your Droplet, you’d need to use a terminal emulator such as PuTTy (on Windows and Linux) or the Terminal application on MacOS.

If you’ve never used PuTTy, I’d check out:

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-log-into-your-droplet-with-putty-for-windows-users

On MacOS, you’d open Terminal and run:

ssh root@ip

Where ip is your Droplet IP. You’d then be prompted for your root password.